After several teasers, Nothing has finally announced its brand-new, affordable phone for 2026: the Nothing Phone (4b).
The London-based brand made headlines in recent weeks with the news that there’d be no successor to the excellent CMF Phone 2 Pro this year. Despite launching well over a year ago, it’s still sitting pretty at the top of our best budget phones guide.
However, Nothing isn’t ignoring the budget phone sector altogether, and the new Phone (4b) is much more in keeping with what we’ve seen from the company previously.
Nothing Phone (4b) design
The phone’s design draws from its slightly more expensive sibling in the Nothing Phone (4a), with subtle semi-transparent flourishes on its camera module and the simplified Glyph system.
The shape of that camera module and the unibody frame, meanwhile, reminds us of the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro – albeit the latter is plastic rather than metal.
Nothing
It’s rated to IP64 for dust and water resistance, meaning it’s fully dust-proof but can only withstand splashes of water. The colour options are pretty standard, though the blue alternative to black and white models looks particularly appealing.
It’s a surprisingly hefty phone, given its plastic build, with dimensions of 164.4 x 78.2 x 8.6mm and a weight of 210g.
Nothing has included its Essential Key from the more expensive models, providing a shortcut to the Essential Space, Essential Search, Essential Voice, Essential Apps and Playground tools.
Nothing Phone (4b) Glyph Interface and display
Nothing’s Glyph Interface here incorporates 45 mini-LEDs (down from 63 in the 4a) spread across four individually addressable zones (down from six).
They can provide notifications, charging progress, recording indicators, and personalised alerts at a brightness of up to 3,500 nits. It’s much less in your face than the Glyph Matrix screen on the (4a) Pro, which many people will appreciate.
Nothing
Around front there’s a 6.77-inch Super AMOLED display with a 2344 x 1080 (FHD+) resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate.
It’ll hit 1200 nits of brightness in direct sunlight and 600 nits with auto brightness switched off, with a peak brightness of 2000 nits in limited HDR scenarios (HDR10+ is supported).
This is flanked, in landscape orientation at least, by dual stereo speakers.
Nothing Phone (4b) performance, battery and camera
As tipped ahead of launch, the Nothing Phone (4b) runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 processor – a lower-mid-range yet fairly modern 4nm chip – together with 8GB of RAM and a meaty 4,400mm² vapour chamber. It comes with 128GB of storage as standard.
The Nothing Phone (4b)’s 5200mAh battery is the largest we’ve seen in a Nothing phone to date. It’s rather dwarfed by the Indian model, however, which stretches to 6000mAh.
There’s wired charging support up to a modest 33W.
Nothing
There’s a 1/2.76” 50Mp main camera with OIS on the back, accompanied by a 1/4″ 8Mp ultra-wide. Around front there’s a 16Mp selfie cam.
The company’s lean, artfully minimalist Nothing OS 4.1 UI (based on Android 16) ships as standard. Software support is rather modest at three years of major OS versions and six years of security updates, though this is at the cheaper end of the scale.
Talking of which, the Nothing Phone (4b)’s sole model costs £299 / €329. This makes it significantly (about 37%) more expensive than the £219 CMF Phone 2 Pro, while undercutting the £329 Samsung Galaxy A27. Given the current economic climate and global RAM shortage, we probably shouldn’t be surprised.
The Phone (4b) will initially be available exclusively from Nothing’s physical store in London on 11 July, before shipping on 17 July. You can pre-order one from the Nothing website now, though it’s not going to be available in the US.
